In the mood for trekking through thick bush to see ancient American structures rise exotically through the mist? If the answer to that rather specific question is in the affirmative, then we might have just the thing - an online slot from developer Pragmatic Play titled Fortunes of Aztec. While exploring these Central American sights, keep an eye out for tumbles, a win multiplier with an unusual incrementing mechanism, and free spins where the win multiplier persists until the round comes to a close.
The Aztecs are a perennial favourite amongst casino game makers, and by now, gamblers have seen a ton of visions from this part of the world. Therefore, there isn't much in Fortunes of Aztec that looks new from a thematic stance. Not saying Fortunes of Aztec doesn't actually look nice, quite the opposite, but the base game comes wrapped in a pretty standard vista made up of a waterfall, a temple, cloudy skies, green foliage, and neatly carved stonework. The soundtrack is nice too, so while there's nothing extraordinary to tickle the senses, Fortunes of Aztec doesn't put a foot wrong audio-visually either.
>Fortunes of Aztec is also solid when it comes to stats, too. RTP is rock steady at 96.42% (though lower configurations may be available), rising to 96.52% when buying free spins. Stakes vary from 20 p/c to $/€240 per spin, catering to a wide selection of budgetary requirements, whilst the math model is highly volatile with a 4.5 out of 5 rating. Holding the fort between all that carved stonework is Fortunes of Aztec's gaming grid consisting of 6 reels, holding 4 symbols each.
Printed above the reels is a message displaying 4,096 Ways, meaning wins are formed when matching symbols land left to right starting from the leftmost side of the grid; row position is irrelevant as long as the reels are adjacent. The tumble feature removes winning symbols from the reels when they hit and fills the gaps by dropping existing symbols downwards and tumbling new ones in from above. Tumbling repeats until no new win appears as a result of a tumble. As for symbols, lows are represented by vine-covered carved 9 to A card ranks, then stylistic representations of a fish, a head, a red backgrounded mask, and a gold backgrounded mask. Hit a left to right 6 OAK winning combination to collect 0.5 to 1.5x the bet for the low pays or 2 to 20 times the bet for the highs. Wild symbols may appear on reels 3, 4, 5, and 6. Wilds substitute for all symbols except the scatter, and they land in either 1x1 or 1x4 full reel sizes.
>On to the features where Fortunes of Aztec boasts a win multiplier, free spins, and a bonus buy.
Every time all symbols from an entire reel is cleared as part of tumbling, the global win multiplier (which starts at x1) increases by +1. When a tumbling sequence ends, the multiplier up till that point is applied to the total win. In the base game, the multiplier resets to x1 for the next spin.
Fortunes of Aztec's scatter symbol appears on all but the leftmost reel in the base game and in free spins. Hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters in the base game awards 12, 15, 20, or 25 free spins, respectively. As before, the x1 starting win multiplier increases by +1 every time an entire reel disappears by tumbles, but it does not reset until the free spins round ends. The multiplier applies to the win at the end of a tumble sequence if the win multiplier increased during the sequence. Hitting 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters awards an extra 5, 7, 10, or 12 free spins, respectively.
Players are able to buy free spins for the cost of 100 times the bet. When buying free spins, 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters randomly hit to trigger the round.
>Players have been led through Aztec territory in online slots so many times now it might be hard to pick out things you probably haven't seen before. This applies to a lot of what takes place in Fortunes of Aztec, yet there are bits which are relatively unique. Nothing is massively creatively paradigm-shifting, but tweaks exist to be experienced. Another one of Fortunes of Aztec's positive aspects is that it didn't do anything negatively noteworthy either. It's glitzy, pacey, and the session ended with feelings of overall satisfaction, even if we weren't exactly blown away.
As for the tweaks, the main novelty in Fortunes of Aztec is the way its win multiplier is grown. We are used to seeing a multiplier increase following tumbles; this is a Megaways staple feature, for one. Less common is growing the multiplier by 1 when an entire reel is removed by tumbling. What makes this process more tolerable than it might have been is that the wild symbol can land as a full reel 1x4-sized symbol. So hit one of them in a win, boom, up goes the multiplier. One would assume the win multiplier would not grow as quickly this way compared to the more orthodox method of incrementing after each winning tumble, but it can be quite effective here, regardless. Fortunes of Aztec's max win bears this out, operating with a win cap of 10,000 times the bet.
All in all, Fortunes of Aztec was not a bad Aztec-themed slot when everything was added up. There might be an abundance of Aztec games on the market already, yet Fortunes of Aztec avoids lowering the genre's average quality level. It doesn't exactly do enough to transcend the genre, but nor does it let the side down either, being a well put together game with sturdy stats and fairly interesting gameplay to match.
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